Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose
by KatharinaVG
Summary: Katie Ravenel posses an ability that causes her to see potentially horrible things. Invited back to teach at Hogwarts, can she lead a normal life? Someone attempts to help her, and she falls for him.....
1. One Night

The girls dormitory in the Slytherin area was quiet and still, with nobody moving.

"Katie", a voice said, quietly, almost whispering the name.

Katie Ravenel, who until this moment had been sleeping soundly in her poster bed, bolted up. She felt like her heart was about to rip through her chest. Putting her hand on her chest, she said "In, Out" directing herself to calm her breathing. She could feel the sweat soaking through her red-satin nightgown. It took about ten minutes to regulate her breathing to where she could lay back down, and attempt to go back to sleep. No sooner had she closed her eyes then she heard it again:

"Katie, you know you want to go..."

"No, no I don't" Katie said quietly, still lying down. Tears started to roll down her cheeks. She couldn't go through this again.

Rolling over, burying her face in the pillow, she tried with all her might to resist the urge to leave the dormitory. "I can't what if I get caught? Then I'll be expelled."

"Katie, I'm telling you, you'll feel a whole lot better if you come to me..."

"No", she said forcefully..."I'm not going"

It was as if a bolt of lightning had surged through her body. She was no longer in control of her body. Now, almost sobbing out of control, she threw the covers off her legs, and reached down to grab her black, ballet flats from the rug under her bed. "Oh, if only someone would wake up...then I'd be safe."

She dropped down to her knees and reached under her bed for her chest, which contained her invisability cloak, which her sister Sophia had given her. It had been in her family for generations. Careful, not to make too much noise she carefully opened the gold clasps, and reached in for the cloak. Katie stared at it hard, almost as if it were the source of her pain...

Wrapping it around her, she walked over to the mirror that the five girls shared, and looked. Good, she was all covered up. Walking over to the heavy wooden door, she put one hand on it, and made sure it didn't squeak. She opened it just enough for her to squeeze herself through. Once she was out on the steps, she closed it as quietly as she had opened it. Walking carefully down the cold, stone steps, she thanked God that she possessed at least one pair of flats. For if she had been barefoot, one could hear the smacking of bare feet on the stone. She rounded the last couple of steps and came to the common room. She breathed a sigh of relief, it was empty. She bolted across the common room, past the fireplace, where the remnants of the fire still barely burned.

She finally reached the door that led out to the hallway. Putting one hand on it, she paused. Katie knew what she was going to face. Breathing deeply, she turned and looked around the common room, "What if this is the last time I see it? She could feel the tears welling up in her eyes again, but she had to go. Carefully she reached for the latch, and opened the door. Looking both directions for anybody that would witness her escape, she sighed when she spotted nobody. Quietly she closed the door, and turned left, towards the steps that would take her into the main hallways of Hogwarts.

Little did Katie know that somebody did in fact see her leave...


	2. Worry

Severus Snape stood hidden behind one of the statues that lined the hallway. Suprisingly, he wasn't mad, in fact he was worried about her safety.

"She's just like her mother. When I first saw her five years ago, at the sorting ceremony, I hoped that she hadn't inherited Jane's curse. But it looks like she has."

Quietly, he started up the hallway after her. He didn't want her to know that he was behind her. But he was too late, he had waited for too long to begin following her, and her had lost her.

"Damn", he muttered under his breath. "I should have known something was wrong by the way she was acting today. Just like Jane looked before..."

His thoughts were cut off by the front door to the school opening and closing seemingly by itself.

"There she is, maybe I can reach her before she gets there."

He bolted up the last few, remaining steps after her. He had reached the door, and had his hand on the latch, when something came flying towards his head, and smashed a couple of inches from it.

There could be only one culprit...Peeves.

Turning around, Snape had on his face a look of anger that would freeze any student, or teacher for that matter.

"Peeves, I don't really have time to deal with you at the moment, I'm rather busy."

Peeves didn't really look all that scared by Snape's expression. In fact he welcomed it as a sort of a challange.

"Why, are you going after Young Miss that just left?" Peeves said with a wide smile on his face.

"Is it any of your business if I am? And for your information, I am going down to talk to Professor Hagrid about an infestation I have in the Potions classroom." Snape tried his best to formulate a plausible lie, but Peeves saw right through it.

"No, Snape is going after the student"

Snape, by this time, was rather anxious to catch up to Katie, and stop anything that could cause her serious injury, like Jane...

"Fine, if you must know, I am going after the student, but it's for her own good."

And with that Snape opened up the door and walked out into the night...


	3. Forbidden Forest

Once out in the dark, Snape scanned the horizon and his near surroundings in an attempt to locate Katie. "Where could she be?" Damn, he thought to himself. He stood there contemplating what to do, when a thought flashed into his mind...the Forbidden Forest. Oh, why hadn't he thought of this before?

Bolting down the remaining steps and across the lawn, Snape slipped and slided across the grass that was alreading starting to layer with dew. He had to catch himself a few times to stop himself from falling straight on his face. He could hear his heart beating in his ears, but he had to reach her. He was nearly there, when he stopped dead in his tracks...

An unearthly green light covered the landscape. There floating a couple of feet in the air was Katie. Her limbs were extremelly relaxed, as if she had lost all control of them. Snape attempted to yell her name, to snap her out of it, but he had tried that once with Jane, and it hadn't worked. He just had to sit back and try to think of something.

Katie started to move higher, her dark brown hair cascading in curly waterfalls into the air. All of a sudden, it was if she had regained control of her limbs, for she started moving them as gracefully as a ballet dancer does. She was doing some kind of unearthly dance. It would have been a beautiful sight, but Snape knew what horrors were going through her head. He knew that she was hearing the voice of the dark lord, hearing the screams of those he had murdered in cold blood. He stood and watched her, it pained him not to be able to do something...But what could he do?

He saw that Katie had opened her mouth in some sort of silent scream. What had the dark Lord revealed to her? Snape's thoughts were shooting through his head. He decided to move closer to her. Maybe he could grab her arm and jerk her out of it? But he was afraid of what the green light might be exactely. When he had gotten as close to her as his nerves would allow for the moment, he could clearly see one of her milky white arms hanging down, with what appeared to be a tiny rivulet of blood running down it. With what started as a trickle turned into a torrent of blood cascading down her arm. Snape looked in horror at her arm? What could be causing this? "To heck with my nerves" Snape thought and grabbed her arm. He looked farther up on her arm and he could see where five places were dug into her arm, they looked like fingernail marks. Snape had to think of something to get her out of this. He heard a tiny trickle of something hitting the ground, and illuminated in the light, he could see blood running down her leg also. Running over to the other side of her, he could see where the blood was coming from. Up her leg, on her inner thigh he could make out the same kind of marks that were on her arm.

As soon as he had touched her leg, the light disappeared, and Katie fell to the ground with a thud. Snape with a look of pure concern for her ran over to where she had landed. She was unconcious, and didn;t respond to him.

" I have to get her to Dumbledore or Madame Pomfrey."

But he couldn't move her with her arm and leg bleeding all over the place. He looked arould for something to make a turniquet with. Her nightgown was short enough already, he didn't want to use that. Looking down he caught a glance of his cloak, took it off and ripped two strips of cloth off. With one he tied it over her arm wound, and with the other, the wound on her leg. He leaned over her again and lightly smacked her cheeks, but she still wasn't responding. He was going to have to carry her.

Reaching down, he put his arms under her and lifted. Her body was still limp and he was afraid that she would fall out of his arms, so he picked up one of her arms and threw it around his neck. With Katie securely in place, he moved as fast as he could back towards the castle.


	4. The Reveal

When he had arrived at Dumbledore's office, almost as if he knew Snape were coming. Dumbledore opened the door. When he saw Katie and the condition that she was in, he directed Snape to lay her on the long sofa facing the fireplace.

Walking over to the couch, he gently laid her down, as if she were made of porcelain and laid her arms on her chest.

Snape stood looking down at her for a minute. She looked so much like Jane, so unaware of the worry that he was going through.

Dumbledore walked over to Snape and looked down on Katie.

"Jane Hamilton wouldn't happen to be this young woman's mother, would she?" Dumbledore asked, but he already knew the answer.

"Yeah, she is", Snape responded, his mind on other things.

"Ah, the famous curse of the Hamiltons. The ability to see things that are going to happen in the future, to go into a trance-like state, and see people being tortured and killed, and not have the ability to stop it or the visions."

Snape put his hands up to his face and pinched the bridge of his nose.

" I should have known that somthing was going to happen. Just the way she was acting in class today, she was so out of it. When Jane, Thomas and I were in school, Jane would act strangly sometimes, but it didn't click with me until after something happened that she was a Hamilton, and that I should have known..." Snape trailed off, remorseful that he couldn't have stopped something that he happened a long time ago.

"You couldn't have stopped it Severus."

"I could have kept her with me tonight, that way I would have been able to stop her from leaving, she didn't have to go through this..."

Dumbledore heard a tiny stirring from the couch. Looking down, he saw that Katie had opened her eyes just a little bit, almost as if the bright light hurt her eyes. She tried to move her arm a little, but let out a tiny cry of pain. Looking at her arm as to what was causing her discomfort, she saw that piece of black cloth covering her wound, and she bolted up sideways.

"What's wrong with my arm?" Katie cried out, with tears starting to run down her face.

Dumbledore sat down beside her on the empty spot on the couch. He tried to think of the best way to explain what she had went through without upsetting her more.

"Miss Ravenel, before tonight, have you ever heard voices that were not there or saw things that other people couldn't see?"

Katie had her eyes glued on the floor. If she were to answer truthfully, would Dumbledore think she was a nutter? She didn't want it going around that school that she was crazy. She looked up, thinking about the best response to give Dumbledore, when her eyes caught a glance of Snape, with his back turned to them. He seemed to be staring intently into the fireplace.

"Miss Ravenel, tonight, did you hear anything out of the ordinary?" Dumbledore asked her again.

Katie knew she was going to have to be truthful. She nodded her head to indicate that she did in fact hear things and see things that nobody could. She looked into Dumbledore's blue eyes, and she saw a look of understanding. She knew he wasn't going to tell anyone.

"Miss Ravenel, has anybody told you about your ancestors?"

"Well, what do you mean? I know all about my father's side of the family, the Ravenel family, but nobody really talks about my mothers side. All I really know is that their from Scotland."

She looked back over to the fireplace, and noticed that Snape was still facing it, but he had started to twiddle his thumbs. What was that about?

"I mean, my mother takes us up there nearly every summer to visit my grandmother, seeing as my grandfather died a couple of years ago, but I have never really been told the story of the Hamiltons."

Dumbledore shifted to a more comfortible position on the couch and breathed deeply.

"Well, I'm not sure I'm the proper one to be telling you this story, but it will put it all into context, about what happened tonight. Hundreds of years ago, the females of you family had a curse put upon them. One of your forebearers had refused to marry a member of another magical family, and he was just so furious that he put a hex on them. Ever since then, the females of you family have been able to see things that will happen in the future, but it's not the good things they can see, it's only the evil things that they could see. The Muggle kings of Scotland, anxious to be able to know what would happen in the future, employed you ancestors. The kings didn't know though about them only being able to see evil, though. Once they found this out, then burned them at the stake..."

Dumbledore was interrupted by Snape. He had turned around and was walking towards the chair that stood opposite of Katie.

"Miss Ravenel, your mother and father were fellow classmates of mine. Your mother was one of the nicest people I have ever met, and that's saying something. But sometimes, she would start to act strange. Got real quiet, defensive, you could just tell that something wasn't right. One night, while she was sleeping, she heard a voice talking to her. She was familiar with it though, she often told me that she thought she was hearing things, but she wasn't sure. Didn't want me to think she was crazy. Well, that night she decided to follow the voice, to see if she could get it to leave her alone. She left the Slytherin common room, and walked up through the school. She heard the voice calling her name when she reached a door that led up to one of the towers. She reached the highest tower at Hogwarts. All of a sudden she spaced out, and had a vision. She saw You-Know-Who killing some people in another part of the country. She felt around like a person newly struck blind. But she couldn't do anything about it. She walked over to the edge, and just stared. She didn't know that I had saw her leaving and had followed her up there. Like I did for you this evening. All of a sudden Jane threw herself from the tower. I bolted over to the edge and performed a spell to soften her blow when she hit. We were in our seventh year, and we knew higher level spells..."

Katie interupted "So your telling me that I heard You-Know-Who this evening?"

Dumbledore looked very solemn and nodded. "I'll have to get in touch with the Ministry of Magic as soon as you leave and see if anything has happened. Altough the Hamilton curse has never been wrong."

Everybody was so engrossed with their thoughts that they didn't notice Professor McGonagal had entered. It was only after she had cleared her throat that all three of them turned around to face her.

"Ah, Minerva, will you please escort Miss Ravenel to the hospital wing, I believe she has some wounds that need to be taken care of."

Looking startled and out of the loop, she agreed and gently took Katie's arm.


End file.
